"I felt so guilty. She lived 40 minutes away, then it hit me … I'm not the only one in Australia who has to make that call to ask mum to look after the house."

Morgan scrapped together $60,000 of her own funds to set up My Home Watch, a service that checks on properties using video streaming and instant alerts that can be sent to home owners' smart devices. It also has staff to personally pick up mail, organise lawn-mowing and attend to pets.

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My Home Watch has more than 120 franchises. Morgan is hoping to sell 20 of the 120 franchises she has by the end of the financial year. One has been sold in Adelaide, and three more are pending in Sydney, Queensland and Adelaide.

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Morgan projects a turnover of $500,000 for her company's first financial year this year.

Unlike house-sitting companies, Morgan's company doesn't employ staff to stay at a property.

"Not all people want to burden their family or friends with looking after their homes, or having to call in a house sitter who's often a complete stranger," she says.

"The business was launched due to the need for a professional service, someone who's trained, who's a professional, who will come in and take care of your things for you, look after things like your mail and your gardens and your lawns and your pool, because everything still happens when you're away – your house just doesn't stop functioning.

"A vacant home at any time is a vulnerable home. Thieves look for vulnerable homes that have overgrown gardens and lawns and mail and junk mail lying around, they look for when your bins aren't put out and taken in, no lights on at night."

Along with property, home owners are also looking to safeguard their pets. Australia's online pet minding marketplace has seen fierce competition between the likes of Mad Paws, Pawshake, PetHomeStay and PetCloud – all of which have been likened to an Airbnb for pets.

Of the 30,000 people to register as pet sitters on Mad Paws, only 6000 were accepted. Chief executive Alex Soulopoulos says the company's tough vetting process is partly responsible for its success.

"Your dog, your cat, your pet is honestly like your child," he says.

"We very much see that and people want to know that we check IDs, they want to know they took our online test and passed, and those people we say are excellent pet sitters actually know what they're doing."

Soulopoulos and his four co-founders raised $100,000 to get Mad Paws off the ground in 2014 and within a year raised $1.1 million from Macdoch Ventures.

Although it is not their primary business, Mad Paws also offers house-sitting and Soulopoulos says it's an increasing part of the start-up.

"It's not really part of our service, but it's growing very fast and of our 6000 pet sitters, I think about 50 per cent would provide house-sitting," he says.

An overnight break-in motivated retiree Michael Davis and his late wife Lucy to build a personal safety app.

"I woke up about 3 in the morning, heard the back door open and jumped out of bed and here was two blokes standing by the door," he says.

"It was terrifying and I just stood there frozen."

The Queensland couple spent $250,000 creating the Guardian Duress Alert App, which contacts five people at the press of one button. It also uses GPS technology to track the user's locations.

"We always said if we ever saved the life of one person we've done a good job and we know we have," Davis says.

"We were contacted by a guy who lived in a small country town in southern Victoria, a block away from his brother, and his nephew was an ice addict and he attacked his father. The last thing his brother did was push the alert on the app and the police told him it saved his life.

"It was never about making money, it was always about saving people's lives."